Why you Won’t Ever Make it Rich Through Blogging

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) constitutes an eternal struggle for bloggers around the world. If you have ever hunted for ways through which you can boost the popularity of your website or blog, you will have come across tons of articles that tell you that the answer to your misery is SEO. Now, I am not saying I have anything against SEO. Here, in any case, is how SEO is killing beginner bloggers;

SEO ties you down

The bots at Google probably have good reason for doing what they do; but to a beginner, the assignment of ranks to websites can appear like so much voodoo. You are essentially tied down and they expect you to do a Houdini and escape from the shackles into the ranks of the few that have made it rich through blogging. So, how has SEO been murdering the aspirations of novice bloggers around the globe?

SEO can become an obsession

Ask any blogger how they are going to make the much sought after breakthrough, and you will be told that they have a number of Search Engine Optimization tricks up their sleeves, all of which will see their creations rising to the top of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS) world. Some of the things that you will hear mentioned when people talk about increasing a website’s rankings include;

• Carrying out on-page SEO
• Carrying out off-page SEO
• Getting backlinks through Guest Posting
• Producing great content

Yet, the truth is that SEO tends to be the equivalent of hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. People tend to use, in this regard, SEO tools such as Yoast. These only add to the obsession.

That’s because even when you have done everything possible and the metrics on your dashboard have all turned green, your article will still only be read by the usual crowd (read your mother, brother, sister and a few other reluctant relatives). And why is that the case?

It’s all about Domain Age, stupid!

No matter how good you and your content may be, the fact of the matter is that Search Engine Optimization is still mostly about the age of your domain. Simply put, the older you website is, the higher its domain authority, and the more likely that it will place higher on Search Engine Result Pages.

I know Mart Curtis or some other person at Google will be cited denying this fact, but this is a phenomenon that many have noticed over the years. What this means is that your blog will likely remain in the doldrums, no matter how much you may try to Search Engine Optimize it.

The Great Guest Posting Backlash

Guest posting is another of the things that can become something of an obsession for many a struggling blogger. The result is that despite the fact that my own site is rather lukewarm in performance, I still receive requests for guest post submissions from around five bloggers (I won’t dare call them wannabe rich persons) on a daily basis. So, where is the backlash?

Having people clamor to have their content published on my poor, struggling site is good right? Well, it would be good, save for the fact that most of the submissions are such and such hogwash! You see, the one thing that I have discovered in my year and a half as a struggling blogger is that people out there are just too lazy.

Plagiarism: Guest posting is thy name

Though they want to have their content published on websites far and wide, people are not really willing to do the work to make it happen. The result is that most of the articles that are submitted as guest posts are plagiarized.

It can be a rather annoying situation, even for a struggling blogger like me. Allowing people to post their content on my site is done as a public service. Yet there are people out there who would still get me penalized by the great Google overloads by posting copied content to my blog! The entire thing has somewhat soured me on Guest Posting.

Blogging probably won’t pay the bills

Once upon a time, I wrote a book about Dinosaurs in miniskirts and published it on Amazon. That was because I had heard that the said miniskirt wearing Dinosaurs were all the rage, with millions already having been made by many a lucky individual.

Unfortunately, by the time I got there, the fad had already become extinct, and all that I got were a few dollars on my ashen face. The same thing is happening around the world of blogging. If you are only just beginning, I am afraid, the ship has already sailed. In fact, it sailed long back and you will probably never make a living out of your venture. And, what about the rags to riches tales that are floating around the internet?

SEO is a Ponzi scheme

I know, this is another controversial statement, but the truth of the matter is that those that joined the blogging world early and SE optimized their sites years ago probably made it rich. These are the people that we hear about today. For the rest, well, if you are patient enough to wait ten or so years for your site to gain the domain authority that it needs, you may just be lucky enough to earn a living out of your venture.

All is not lost

So, what does this all mean? How about the fact that blogging (and writing in general) should be all about having a passion and doing something that you actually enjoy? If you do it because you want to make money, you will be setting yourself for a life of disappointment. Do it because it’s a passion, and you may just join the ranks of those that have made it.